CAMBRIDGE, MASS., USA -- October 9, 1997 -- The World
Wide Web Consortium (W3C) today issued the first Working Draft of
its Document Object Model (DOM) specification,
Core Level 1, addressing core functionality for document navigation and content
manipulation. "The collaboration on DOM reinforces the strength of the W3C
process", said Arnaud Le Hors, W3C DOM Activity Leader. "The W3C DOM Working
Group is developing a platform- and language-neutral program interface that
will allow programs and scripts to access every element in a document and
update the content and structure of documents in a standard way."

"The Document Object Model could be the most significant interoperability
standard to ever come out of the W3C," said Gavin Nicol, Systems Architect
at Inso Corporation and contributor to the DOM working group. "The DOM API
will 'level the playing field' for vendors developing document manipulation
applications. With DOM, Web authors, script writers, and application developers
will be able to write programs once and have them run equally well in all
DOM-compliant implementations. In addition to supporting important emerging
standards such as XML, XSL, and XLL, Inso is committed to supporting DOM
in future versions of products such as DynaText and DynaBase."

"DOM Level 1 provides the framework for truly dynamic documents on the Web.
We are pleased to contribute to this work," said David Singer, Senior Technical
Staff Member, IBM.

Interoperability = Author Empowerment

Current software implementations which allow dynamic access and updates of
content, structure and style lack a standard interface -- resulting in authors'
inability to use the programs in an interoperable manner. The W3C is tackling
this problem with DOM; its foundation being Level 1.

"This first draft of Level 1 goes a long way toward promoting the
interoperability of the Web," said Lauren Wood, DOM Working Group Chair and
Technical Project Manager of SoftQuad, Inc. "It provides a general framework
to which we will be adding in the specifications to come, and is flexible
enough to be used for many different applications and by many different people."

"The DOM Working Draft lays the groundwork for interoperability," said David
Cole, vice president of the Internet client and collaboration division at
Microsoft. "Microsoft is committed to continuing its leading support of the
W3C DOM in Microsoft Internet Explorer."

"Netscape believes this first working draft represents a significant advancement
that will provide developers with a standard way to create dynamic content,"
said Dave Rothschild, director of client product marketing at Netscape. "A
standard implementation of the DOM--in conjunction with Java and JavaScript--will
allow developers to produce platform-independent application interfaces that
lay the foundation for a next-generation of crossware applications."

"The possibilities offered by Document Object Model API are practically
unlimited, and essential to the efficient diffusion and processing of information
throughout any organization. Grif intends to incorporate the DOM API into
its existing Global Application Toolkit Environment to enable the same kinds
of enriched document creation and management applications on intranets that
are used today in our customers' industrial-strength publishing systems."
said Murray Maloney, Technical Marketing Director, Grif S.A.

Tim Bray, invited expert on the DOM Interest Group and co-editor of the W3C
XML specification, said "This DOM draft is a great beginning. It includes
everything you need for serious client-side XML processing, starting now.
With the DOM, Java, ECMAscript, and XML, the pieces are finally falling into
place so we can bring the Web alive."

"ArborText is continually seeking ways for our customers to improve their
levels of reuse, and supporting DOM will enable them to reuse the same code
for both content creation and content delivery," said Paul Grosso, ArborText's
VP of Research and Advisory Committee representative to W3C.

"Script authors will probably use more of the functions in the HTML and XML
specifications, which the DOM Working Group is currently designing," continued
Wood. "We plan to have more to say on that front soon."

The Core Level 1 DOM Working Draft is expected to be followed by HTML and
XML Level 1 specifications in the near term. After the release of these
specifications, the Working Group will work on formulating other Levels of
the DOM that specify a standard event model, style sheet model and a more
sophisticated security model.

About the World Wide Web Consortium [W3C]

The W3C was created to develop common protocols that enhance the interoperability
and promote the evolution of the World Wide Web. It is an industry consortium
jointly run by the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) in the USA,
the National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control (INRIA)
in France and Keio University in Japan. Services provided by the Consortium
include: a repository of information about the World Wide Web for developers
and users; reference code implementations to embody and promote standards;
and various prototype and sample applications to demonstrate use of new
technology. To date, over 210 organizations are Members of the Consortium.

About the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science

Now in its third decade, MIT LCS is dedicated to the invention, development
and understanding of information technologies expected to drive substantial
technical and socio-economic change. The LCS has helped information technology
grow from a mere curiosity to 10 percent of the industrial world's economies
by its pioneering efforts in interactive computing, computer networking,
distributed systems and public key cryptography. LCS members and alumni have
started some thirty companies and have pioneered the Nubus, the X-Window
System, the RSA algorithm, the Ethernet and spreadsheets.

About INRIA

INRIA, the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and
Control, is a public-sector scientific institute charged with conducting
both fundamental and applied research, and with transferring research results
to industry. INRIA is made up of five Research Units located at Rocquencourt
(near Paris), Rennes, Sophia Antipolis, Nancy and Grenoble. Areas of current
research include information processing, advanced high speed networking,
structured documents, and scientific computation.

About Keio University

Keio University is one of Japan's foremost computer science research centers
and universities. It is one of the oldest private universities in Japan,
andhas five major campuses around Tokyo. Keio University has been promoting
joint research projects in cooperation with industry, government and
international organizations, and is now becoming one of the research leaders
for the network and digital media technology.